Coinbase to Diversify Ethereum Infrastructure

Coinbase’s move follows criticism from Aftab Hossain who expressed concerns about a single-client staking setup relying on Geth.

In response to the ongoing concerns raised by opponents over the dominance of Geth throughout the ecosystem, Coinbase is currently attempting to incorporate another Ethereum execution client into its infrastructure.

Coinbase announced its new initiative to decrease its dependence on go-ethereum, also known as Geth, in a post published on X (formerly known as Twitter) on January 22.

Coinbase Cloud discovered that Geth was the only Ethereum execution client that satisfied its technical requirements when it offered Ethereum staking.

The thread provides detailed information on this matter. Although we have been evaluating execution clients since 2020, none of them have been able to meet the requirements of Coinbase Cloud.

There are a significant number of other operators on the network that have arrived at the same conclusion, which is one of the reasons why 84% of Ethereum validators run Geth. The thread, on the other hand, states that “the tide is turning.”

The Ethereum execution client known as Geth is responsible for managing transactions as well as the deployment and execution of smart contracts.

To incorporate an additional Ethereum execution client into its infrastructure, Coinbase is now conducting a technical evaluation of various alternative Ethereum execution clients.

Before the end of February 2024, the exchange will make a public announcement regarding a formal update on the procedure. Aftab Hossain, a cryptocurrency investor, posted on X, which caused the exchange to issue a statement highlighting its dependence on Geth.

“I can’t ignore the risks of what appears to be a single client staking setup (reliant on Geth) at this time,” Hossain said in a post from his DCinvestor profile, which has approximately 236,000 followers.

Hossain’s decision to unstake Ether from Coinbase was based on the fact that it depended on Geth. If I have misunderstood your architecture, I would appreciate it if you would take this post as an opportunity to explain it to me stated Hossain.

Coinbase CEO and co-founder Brian Armstrong responded directly to the post, stating that the exchange looked into the situation. Armstrong also mentioned that the search was ongoing.

Additionally, Hossain communicated with John Zettler, who is in charge of the staking product at Coinbase, and Bienvenido (Ben) Rodriguez, who is a protocol specialist.

Both of these individuals indicated that the exchange is working to resolve the comments from the community. According to a page on Ethereum.org devoted to client diversity, Geth is already being used by 85 percent of all nodes.

Additionally, the page draws attention to the possibility of a flaw in Geth that could impact the handling of transactions or the execution payload, which could result in consensus clients concluding transactions that are problematic or include bugs.

Concerns over execution client bugs are relevant after the Ethereum infrastructure company Nethermind fixed a significant bug in multiple versions of its execution client on January 22.

The bug was responsible for users being unable to execute blocks on Ethereum.